


Eat the Rich

by Neyiea



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cannibalism, First Meetings, Flirting, Horror Elements, M/M, Marijuana, One Shot, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: Jerome is a serial killer with his sights set upon the elusive Prince of Gotham.Those plans change.
Relationships: Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 13
Kudos: 135





	Eat the Rich

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I was playing with since it is, after all, horror-month. I tried to write more and couldn't seem to, but figured this worked well enough as a stand-alone. Although it is a damn shame that I will not be able to have Jerome saying, straight to Bruce's face, "You know what they say, _eat the rich_." before he, y'know. ;)

Jerome is a simple, charismatic man with a particular sense of humour which sparked an even more particular appetite. Gotham is a city teeming with the corruptly wealthy; people born with silver spoons in their mouths who’d only ever given civilians scraps. Tiny fragments of their time, attention, money. Even then, those acts weren’t out of altruism but out of a desire to make themselves seem better than their other, shallow socialite companions. Jerome doesn’t actually care about those circumstances overly much, though he’d be sure to site them if he ever felt like starting a riot. Mostly he cares about how through the circumstances of birth these people are naturally at the top of the food chain, and someone like him? He was born at the bottom. 

But he doesn’t want to claw his way to the top. He doesn’t want glittering diamonds or golden rings, he doesn’t want champagne baths and penthouse views. He doesn’t want any of the things that are offered to him in the tearful seconds before the Gotham elite meet their agonizing end.

Jerome, the newest serial killer in this mad city, wants the people who he targets to end up even lower than him. Humiliated by him. Mutilated by him. Desecrated by him. 

He stalks them. He hunts them. He kills them. 

He eats them.

Five murders in and the cannibalism hasn’t been found out—the police had only just precautionarily connected the murders; there wasn’t much more they could do when there were no bodies for them to examine—but a day would be coming where Jerome wouldn’t wait for a sizzling pan and spices to feast upon his kill. 

He wants to take someone’s heart right out of their chest. Wants to bite into the muscle and feel the blood spray against his face. Wants to leave it there—half-eaten, the first part of someone that he’d purposefully leave behind to be found—for the police to examine and feel horrified over as they realize that this is what happened to everyone else who’d gone missing. Wants every rich fuck in Gotham to shake in their over-priced boots. Wants them to hide away, cowering at every shadow and sound. Wants them to beg for mercy without a chance of receiving it. 

Wants the people _like him_ to take over and turn this entire island upside down.

There are so many rich assholes in his city that he knows it’s going to take time, but that’s why his next kill is going to be the most important one to date. Maybe even the most important one ever. Maybe the one whose heart he’ll devour raw. 

Bruce Wayne, he thinks as he slicks back his hair and straightens his shirt-collar, trying to conjure an image of the boy who’d been avoiding the press ever since the death of his parents. He’s seen plenty of rich teenagers; sneers and smirks and empty smiles, immaculate nails, shiny hair. Bruce had dark eyes, dark hair, serious features, or at least he did as a child in the single photo that Jerome had found of him before he fully turned his back on the limelight that his family name and history had sprung upon him. 

I wonder what you’ll taste like.

He was the youngest that Jerome had ever thought to target. Younger, even, than Jerome himself, but he was also the richest person in the entire city which meant that his death, over all others, would rock Gotham’s foundations.

I wonder if you’ll melt in my mouth. 

Jerome looks himself over in the mirror once more, then clips a stolen and altered ID card onto his apron’s pocket. 

It was time to mingle with the wealthy for the sixth time in a little over three months. It was exciting, to be killing so fast, and if it were any other population he was dealing with he might worry that he would start to get noticed, to get recognized as a wolf amongst sheep. Fortunately the wealthy morons in Gotham rarely bothered to pay much attention to the hired help, other than to demand more glasses of wine, even when evidence was piling up that someone was targeting them. They were so used to thinking that they were above fear, above being prey, above everything just because of their bank accounts.

Jerome smiles, razor sharp, at his reflection. 

But they’re not above anything when they’re dead. 

The party is already in full swing when Jerome arrives, but he’s so good at blending in that not even the other help seem to realize that he’s not one of them. He waits upon the rich and thinks about which one he will target next time. He smiles at awful jokes and thinks about cutting out tongues. He weaves between bodies, eyes ever searching for his quarry. Bruce should be, if not the center of most of these peoples’ attention, then at least someone to be gossiped about enough that he would be easy enough to find. The prodigal son returned to his throne at last. 

An hour and a half in with two hours to go, and Jerome hasn’t so much as heard a whisper of his name even though he’d heard from a reliable source that Bruce would be attending. 

He sets his serving tray aside in the kitchen and, knowing from experience that an extra body will not be missed, slips through the crowds and onto one of the balconies.

He doesn’t even realize he’s not alone until he smells the pungent smoke of burning cannabis. 

The figure leaning against the railing, features almost completely imperceptible in the shadows of the night, turns towards him quickly, as if just as shocked by Jerome’s presence as Jerome had been by his. Jerome can’t make out his expression at all, but he can feel the strength of his stare for a few seconds before the stranger sighs explosively and says, “Fuck, I thought you were Tommy.”

Jerome takes a pack of cigarettes from his apron and pulls one out. “Nah. I’m just the hired help.”

The stranger; a young man, judging by his voice—maybe late teens, maybe early twenties—snorts.

“Trust me, you’re already better company than he is.” He turns away from Jerome, blowing smoke over the edge of the balcony and leaning even further against the railing. “The last time I saw him I had to threaten to punch him in the dick.”

Jerome can’t bite back a sharp laugh. “That why you hidin' out here instead of smoking up in a bathroom inside?”

“No. I just wouldn’t want to make a scene.”

“There are worse things going on in the bathrooms right now.” Jerome is pretty sure he caught a glimpse of a bunch of twenty-somethings snorting coke. “Cannabis is the least likely thing to cause a scene.”

“I just don’t like the attention,” he says softly and then, inexplicably, he holds out the joint. “Want to smoke with me for a bit? If you won’t be missed, that is. These kinds of events make me feel lonely sometimes, and not the kind of lonely that anyone in there can fix.”

“Aw, you poor rich-boy,” Jerome says with a roll of his eyes, though the mocking isn’t as edged as it could be. He puts his cigarette back into the carton and reaches for the joint. “Do you often try to bribe people into conversation with weed?”

“Not often,” he says with a shrug. “Just on special occasions.”

Jerome brings the joint up to his lips.

For all that the dark figure had claimed he was lonely, he doesn’t talk much. Jerome supposes he could understand that, though. Sometimes it was nice to be on the outskirts and not talk, rather than be in the full swing of things and be forced to talk. Easier to observe prey that way, he thinks with a smirk. They pass the joint back and forth, still distant enough that Jerome can’t really make out his face; the light coming from the balcony doors too dim to do more than cast burnished gold upon the very edges of him. 

“Gotta get back in there,” Jerome says as he passes it back one final time. “A man like me has to work to eat.” He inwardly chortles at his own dark humor. 

“Thanks for hanging out,” the dark figure says, taking one last puff and exhaling with a sigh. “I’m going to have to go in soon, too.” He doesn’t sound very happy about it.

“You’ve got less than two hours ahead. I’m sure you’ll survive, rich-boy.”

He laughs under his breath and grinds the finished joint beneath his heel. Jerome has heard a lot of fake laughter tonight, and it always managed to raise his hackles, but he has a nice laugh; a little subdued, but genuine. This stranger has been an interesting change-of-pace. Jerome might even feel something almost like regret if he kills him someday. 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I live to serve.” Jerome exits with a parody of a bow, going back into the kitchen for his serving tray and loading fresh glasses upon it. When he enters the ballroom again he can tell that something in the air has shifted.

It takes a few minutes before he finally hears it, whispers of that name. Bruce Wayne had arrived after all, unfashionably late. He sees the eyes of the people around him darting towards a wall, eager to lay upon the one who had been given the epithet of The Prince of Gotham on the day of his birth. Jerome walks forward, unnoticed by the crowd as always, and he begins to realize that this is the path he had taken before, in order to get to the balcony. 

Leaning against the wall, just beside the balcony doors, is—

A young man with dark hair, dark eyes, serious features. Jerome steps a little closer to him, and he catches a scent made even more familiar by the way that it’s subtly clinging to his own clothing.

Bruce Wayne catches sight of him and—

Smiles. His entire face becomes radiant when he smiles. 

“You’ve come back to keep me company?”

He’s unexpectedly cute.

“Are you going to bribe me again?” Jerome asks with a smirk, but inwardly he’s reeling, re-calculating, re-evaluating. “I was rather fond of that.”

Bruce laughs softly again, and he leans in a little closer.

“If I disappear before the party is over my guardian will have my head, but maybe after?”

Bruce had been the interesting change-of-pace. Bruce is looking at him, talking to him, recognizes him. Bruce had smiled when he saw him.

Maybe Jerome won’t devour his heart raw, after all.

“After works for me.”

Jerome turns away, and he makes new plans on the spot. Picks a new target that had pissed him off earlier. Lifts their house keys. Makes a copy. Approaches groups of people with them displayed on his tray with a question of if anyone knew who they belonged to until he gets the man’s name, number, and laughingly enough even his address from the increasingly drunken guests. He won’t be able to make his move for a few days, at least—it wouldn’t do to rush just because his previous plans had to be cast aside—but it wouldn’t be long until another Gotham elite disappeared without a trace. 

And after the party… 

They meet. They smoke. They exchange names.

“Jerome,” Bruce repeats lowly after their belated introduction. He shifts a little closer, until their shoulders brush together. “Thank you for keeping me company tonight. Maybe it’s rude of me, but I really—I really dislike a lot of the people who attend these events.” Dislike was such a weak word for what Jerome felt towards most of the people at these things. “Everything is so…”

“Fake?”

“Yeah,” Bruce sighs heavily. “Laughter and smiles and condolences. Everything is fake except the jewelry and the designer clothes.” 

“And the cocaine, I’m pretty fucking sure that was real,” Jerome adds, and Bruce lets out a single sharp laugh before he dissolves into a coughing fit. Jerome pats his back through it, and once Bruce can finally breathe easily again he flashes Jerome a faint smile. 

They exchange numbers. They say goodbye. Bruce shakes his hand before he goes, but his touch lingers. When he draws away his fingertips graze against Jerome’s palm and fingers, a leisurely caress, and his dark eyes seem to assess Jerome’s expression for any signs of aversion to the contact.

“I hope that you can keep me company again, sometime,” Bruce says in parting. 

Jerome decides that he isn’t going to eat him. 

Well, not in the usual way. Jerome would be more than happy to devour Bruce in a _fun_ way that they both could enjoy. Although maybe he would bite too hard every once in a while in order to savour the bluest-blood in the whole city. 

Bruce Wayne, he thinks hungrily, I wonder what you’ll taste like.

**Author's Note:**

> Just imagine a very _Hannigram_ sort of romance happening. Jerome woos Bruce. Jerome proves that he can both protect and provide for Bruce (by feeding him human meat sourced from his ultimate enemy: Theo Galavan). Bruce eventually figures it out and now all of the fucking cannibal puns _make sense._  
>  Or maybe Bruce has a hidden tendency to bat his doe eyes at people, and they don't notice the knife until it's digging up underneath their ribcage. Serial killers in love. Live your best life.


End file.
